feeling heartbeat steals my lover's sound
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: "Don't get nasty, gorgeous." — She cracks heads, he breaks necks. [Caroline, Enzo] In the end he's a soldier, without direction, without purpose, and he needs her. Desperately. FOR NICOLE.


**AN:** I'd like to point out that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm embarrassed, and mortified at myself. I'd also like to point out I began writing this before this week's episode came out, and so spoiler alert, a lot of the nasty shit that happens in that episode goes down a different way. I also imagined Enzo as a little variant from the Enzo in this ep (who was stellar tbh) and idk EVERYONE IS OOC AND FLAT. I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. I AM SO EMBARRASSED.

I'd also like to point out why I'm mortified. It's nicole's birthday, and she was on my tumblr dash weeping on carenzo, and I wanted to do this for her.  
Somewhere along the line this became sort of...smutty. I've never written sex before.

_Ever_.

So like, this is terrible. This is probably the worst sexy stuff I've ever written. It's my first time okay! NO ONE ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS! DON'T LOOK AT ME! I AM DYING. _DYING._

So, Carenzo. unbetad. I mean seriously, I couldn't even bear to re-read this shit. Half-assed writing, half-assed smut. Half-assed _everything_. Not betad. Will probably pull this down in a few days, will probably come back again to fix it, maybe. I DON'T KNOW. FUCKING HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICOLE. YOU DESERVE ALL THE NAKED IDRIS ELBAS IN THE WORLD. ALL OF THEM.

* * *

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* * *

She's picking glass out of her hair, he spits blood, and between the two of them the parking lot's a wreck. Caroline turns her back on him, wincing when she a few locks hang on the shard she's pulling out of her scalp, squelching red and ripping her hair away with it which, _Ow._

"Need a little help?"

He's helped enough. Caroline manages to pull it out the whole way and drops it on the ground, fingertips wet.

She shoots him a chilly look, laughter brimming out of his throat, up into his eyes faster than a flame on a trail of gasoline, Enzo looks positively warmed by the carnage he's wrought. She wants to drive the heel of her boots into his eyes. For god's sake, is this how all the guys around her get their rocks off?

Stopping for gas on the way to Atalanta, on a mission of extreme importance – Stefan's _life_ hangs in the balance – and Damon's fucking fangirl _Enzo_ picks a fight with the neighborhood motorcycle gang.

There are five men on the ground, only one heart among them beats. Caroline's stomach turns, he's insane. "What is wrong with you?"

"Oh, it's just a bit of fun," Enzo's mouth softens, the mirth let out of it."Don't get nasty, gorgeous."

It's boiling behind her rib cage, and Caroline pulls her hands into her hair, there's smaller shards still embedded into her skull, and they sting like a bitch.

They're wasting time, and he's killing for the thrill of it. You know what? That's his problem. She can't stop him from doing what he likes on his own time, she doesn't care if he eats children, but right now? With her best friend's life hanging in the balance? Caroline is having _none of that shit_. "Not on my watch," Caroline bites, she's had a bear bottle broken on her skull, bruises chewing the insides of her arms, and blood on her favorite shirt, and he'd broken every neck in the parking lot."You hear me?"

Enzo's molars grind, he begins. "What makes you think –"

"_You don't kill anyone we're not supposed to while you're with me_. We've got our mark, his name's _Avery_," Tom. _Tom_ Avery. Caroline swallows, her words go down her throat like acid. "You'll do as I tell you. You let me handle this. Or I swear to god, you're walking to Atlanta."

That threat's not a bluff. She doesn't even know why he's tagged along with her, either he's the traveler's representative meant to baby-sit her, or he's got something else up his sleeve. What she _does_ know is that Enzo's been in a cell for a century and then some, and Augustine hasn't seen to it to give him driving lessons.

She also knows that he could break her arm if he wanted, but Enzo makes no move to retaliate in any such manner. Unlike what she expected of him, considering all his Damon worship. Damon would've slit her throat and fucked the consequences, it was only one part out of the thousand things that made him such a fucking douchebag, and majorly why all his master plans sucked _ass._

Enzo studies the stubbed out cigarettes on the floor, then the night sky with its stars of smashed glass and then her, he scrubs his ear with his knuckles.

"Well?" Caroline doesn't remember ever sounding so much like her mother. She's the Sheriff's daughter, through and through, and she won't budge. "Are we clear?"

Enzo's chin drags down and digs into his chest, his brow a sullen wrinkle. He sounds flat, without any intonation that could suggest him being in defiance of her orders. "Yes."

Not _fine_, or _whatever_. But succinct, rather quick acceptance.

A dead-eyed child soldier.

Caroline's mouth almost hangs, she's still breathing hard and fast. She's been cracking heads, and he's been breaking necks. The only heartbeat from the men in the parking lot pounds in her ears, weak and fluttery, Enzo can hear it too. It's sloppy to leave one alive, but Caroline's just as human as he thinks she is. She digs her keys out of her pocket, and makes for their ride, shoulder's back, eyes ahead.

Enzo doesn't fight about that last man, about that last life he's loathe to spare.

He doesn't do anything that she expects him to.

That's going to become a problem, sooner or later.

* * *

She doesn't talk to him any more than she has to. Enzo is here as an extension of the travelers, he doesn't need her to do what he needs to do, so she can't kick him out of the car either. His presence puts a bad taste in her mouth. He's got Damon's easy, insufferable confidence, and his smirk too.

He's brainless, and he thinks he's charming. He's also going to act if she hesitates. If he acts, Caroline's a 100% sure he's going to mess_ everything_ up. She can't be allowed a moment of doubt before she snaps the doppelganger's neck, she can't be allowed to edge out of it. Figuratively there's a gun in her hand, barrel set on the man wearing Stefan's face, and Enzo over her shoulder. Enzo who's going to make her pull the trigger whether she wants to or not.

He's their assurance.

She doesn't talk to him more than she has to, because every opportunity she gives him for conversation means hearing every dumb Damon-loving thing that fox trots of his mouth.

She's filling up at the gas station, and he's looking at the boy at the pit stop. Caroline nods at him, tersely. "There's blood bags in the trunk."

"Now why would I want a bag?"

"You get a bag or I'm –"

"Or what, Goldilocks?" He crooks his brow.

Caroline's blood is chilly, and her look cold marble. He's not cowed in the least, but he pulls his hands out from his pockets and does what she says anyway, his movements exaggerated, patronizing he bites off the top of a bag and _sucks._

Caroline's done with the fuel, she slides back into the driver's seat, and Enzo sighs, takes his time getting next to her. He can sass her all he wants, posture about, but Enzo's been in a lab for over fifty years, maybe eighty, maybe more – he's used to taking orders, even when he mouths off, he does as she says, but destroys the peace in other smaller ways. Like getting on her nerves, asking her impertinent questions about her life. _Damon says you're chatty, Damon says you've got a thing for accents, Damon says –_

"Say," He taps the window, and she throws him a snappy, impatient glare. A green signboard rolls into the corner. "feel like a drop in New Orleans?"

She'd like to drop kick him into a _billboard_. "No."

"Really? Rollicking place, last I remember."

She's not going to ask, she's not, she's _not_ – "We're on a mission. What're you trying to achieve by aggravating me?"

He shrugs. "I'm bored."

He's in a lazy sprawl, doesn't bother with a seatbelt. He'd given her a look when she slid on hers, belittling. "I guess you think you're one hell of a riot."

"I don't think anything," Enzo says, "I heard you don't have a sense of humor."

"If you're so in love with Damon," Caroline grouses, the school yard taunt. She regrets _nothing_. "_Why don't you marry him?_"

"Didn't you two have a thing?"

"That's none of your business."

"Ah," Enzo muses, "mentioned you might be a bit of a prude."

Caroline stops the car, brakes screaming, sparks flying. His head hits the dash, cartilage snapping gruesome. It's the perfect moment for a victorious smile, but there's a sick, hateful feeling wrangling up her gut, and not even Enzo's astonished look, cupping his nose as blood gushes between his fingers is enough to sate her.

"You don't know anything about me and Damon," She says, quietly. _You don't know what he did to me_. "And you don't say another god damn word about him with me around. I don't care what the travelers want, but I swear on everything that is holy, you say his name again, you _speak_ to me about him again – I'm kicking you out of this car and you'll find your own way to Atlanta."

She doesn't ask are we clear? They're crystal. Enzo doesn't say a word, so she drives before he has to.

* * *

Caroline likes boys. She's known that ever since she was a kid. Mommy didn't have time for her, Daddy was happy with another man, and boys were so easy to like, they wanted her quite nicely when she primped her hair just right and smiled just _so._

And when Elena came along Boys became battles, boys became about winning. Elena had her shiny quarterback boyfriend, Matt Donovan who everyone liked for reasons Caroline didn't care to imitate - he was so _white-bread_ it was a wonder how he managed it. Drunk mom, druggie sister, football career ahead of him. The two of them were like a couple in a picture, the pair in the movies Caroline liked to watch.

Bonnie flexes her knuckles when Benny Horowitz hits the ground screaming. Caroline sees the whole thing, so obviously the both of them get called to the Principal's office. This is _terrible_, Caroline's never been in trouble before. She keeps looking to see if they've opened a file on her, and big wet tears clump on her lashes when she hears them phoning her mother.

Bonnie sniffs haughtily, her red shoes kicking in the air, her arms folded unmindful of the disapproving looks the secretary throws at them. Caroline wrings her hands, "You shouldn't have hit him."

Bonnie glares at her. "He was being mean."

"Boys don't like it when girls hit them."

"I don't care then," Bonnie vows, vehement. She's normally so well behaved. "Boys are _stupid._"

Boys stop messing with Bonnie and next Valentine's the teachers watch the both of them with beady eyes. Waiting to sea if any one else is stupid enough to crumple Bonnie Bennet's card. No one does, because Bonnie doesn't pen another one.

Caroline wrings her hands. Benny Horowitz's mother cries, Grams sips from a shiny silver flask and Caroline's mother frowns. Liz Forbes has a terrible frown, and it knots Caroline's insides like rope.

Bonnie doesn't care about boys, but that's no way to win. Caroline learnt how to make her hands soft, to never break into the clench of a fist. Boys like it when you smelt nice, when you looked nice, when your hair was pretty and you said their name all soft and sweet. Like you were brainless.

Caroline couldn't beat that. But she could like boys, she could kiss boys, she could win with all the boys who couldn't want Elena because Elena was all booked up with Matt.

Caroline ran committees, she single-handedly managed to find the DJ in the dumpster at the last dance which meant she'd saved it. Elena could wear the crown, Caroline could tend the booth.

Caroline studied Maths till she was hissing algorithms in her sleep, she aced all the exams and Elena got off on a B+ because she had such an effortless way of smiling at the people around her.

Caroline became bitchy-Caroline, shallow-Caroline - blonde and pretty, and _mean_. Because she liked boys, and tried to like Elena - Elena was so easy to like, but so easy to envy too. And somewhere along the line she stopped wanting boys, stopped wanting to win. She grew fangs, and fell in love with all the wrong ones.

And Caroline didn't want to win anymore.

She wanted to be happy.

* * *

Elena and Damon are screaming at each other in the next room, and Enzo unstops the fanciest glass flask on the shelf. He pours her a drink with a fine spun smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and Caroline forgets to be as angry with him.

She's already broken his nose once, if she needs to she'll do it again.

She rests the glass against the swell of her lower lip, regarding the rest of him. He's listening raptly to what's happening, smirking at the sound of the vase that smashes against the wall – he's got a nice mouth, when it's not curved into a shit eating grin.

One of his legs is sprawled out. Enzo isn't particularly graceful, he's only got half a rogue's charm, and Caroline's sure a lot of that's pretend too. He can only assume the lounging grace, he's wound too tight beneath that, like he's wearing a badly tailored suit, it falls about wrong on his shoulders. Caroline's sure that if she banged her palm on the table hard enough he'd _startle._

Otherwise he presses his thumbs against the bottom of his glass, printing each corner as he listens.

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – there's something sick about it. A woman who chose to be a bystander to his torture, and somehow he loves her? Caroline doesn't push it any further than her being old as balls, she knows what it's like to be in a cage. Needing something to cling to.

She hasn't been in one long enough to develop the strand of Stockholms needed to have an affection for the people who'd _left_ her there. Which is basically Enzo's deal with Damon and Maggie, both have abandoned him and yet both he seeks.

She forgave Tyler, though. She can forgive, and she can love for it. Main difference between Enzo and her? Tyler was sorry, Tyler had to _earn_ her again.

Enzo wants to thank Maggie for walking away.

Her breath fogs up the glass and her mouth turns down. It's _depressing._

She'd said, _no offence but isn't she old by now?_ Smart enough not to say the words 'dead and buried' hovering tentatively behind her question, waiting to be felt, to be called out into the light only if he notices them.

There's something hollow and made-up about his confidence, about him. She's seen swaggering charm pinned by the undercurrent of fear of rejection, Klaus and his inferiority complex and his apparent love for her or _whatever_ - but Enzo smirks, he looks like an animal trying on someone else's gestures, things he only half-remembers how to do. He remembers more around Damon though, a little more of that cockiness he borrows. And, she realizes, around her too.

Enzo remembers how to pour drinks and kill people and say clever, mean things to pretty girls. He remembers that everyone left him. That the world moved on.

He doesn't know how to operate a television, and the microwave positively flummoxes him.

In that kind of world, with its speeding locomotives and it's high strung radio wires, what else is left but to cling to the only faces that remember the time of before?

He plays pool with Damon, has caught on taking his calls. Calls her _Gorgeous_, as impertinent as a slap to the face, and keels, hanks falling back, and obeys whenever anyone tells him to sharply enough.

"Caroline!" Her friend calls instead, and Caroline can hear the tears trembling at the back of Elena's throat. "Come on, we're leaving!"

Enzo's brows go up and his mouth turns down, utterly nasty in his interest. He's enjoying the drama, isn't he? Caroline sets aside her glass and leaps to her feet. By the time she's in the hallway the afternoon's already slanting in like knives, the door banging in Elena's leave, the doppelganger's boots clicking sharply on the driveway, her brown hair storming behind her.

Damon's an _idiot_. Caroline takes in a huge breath, and turns for her jacket.

It's already in Enzo's hands.

He holds it open for her, and Caroline doesn't have time to argue. She'd flung it in his face, and he's already helping her shrug it on before she can realize that she's _letting_ him. Utterly meek, his eyes cast down and devoid of any smartass remarks.

Caroline pulls her hair over her shoulder, pulling the collar of her jacket stiffly. Enzo slips back a step, scratching the back of his head before digs his hands into his pockets and shifts on his feet.

Elena's already a while away, wrestling with the car door, and the smile that Caroline summons up is rather uncomfortable. He doesn't catch it, but he flinches all the same.

She feels sorry for him.

* * *

"Enzo stole my phone," Bonnie mentions over Jeremy's line, she speaks low and angry. Which Caroline guesses is more to do with Jeremy's recent behavior than the fact that she can no longer text Caroline for a glass of water from the other side of their _dorm._

Caroline can hear the thunder crackling in the distance. Bonnie mad isn't a common thing, but when she's pricked, it raises its head like the unmuzzled beasts guarding the gates of hell. Bonnie causes typhoons when she's mad, she cracks the earth like a peach, splits it into angry halves.

When Bonnie gets mad, the world _trembles._

Caroline sets her paper aside, pencil rattling out of her hand. "_What?_"

"He's gone now. Stole my phone. Cracked Jeremy's head against the kitchen counter too, so _he's_ out for now." Bonnie relays, flatly. The more level Bonnie's tone goes, the worse the damage – Bonnie is _pissed_. "Mentioned something about pulling out Stefan's spine. Headsup."

_What the hell is going on?_

"Wait, what the _hell_ – where are you - _Are you okay?_"

"We're fine." In her mind's eye, Caroline can see Bonnie chewing the inside of her mouth. Bonnie sighs, "Is Stefan with you? I've been trying to call him."

"He's at the Grille."

Bonnie laughs, "Would you look at that. Elena said something about going there too."

Caroline rolls her eyes so hard into the back of her head it's a miracle she doesn't pull something. "I'll give her a call."

"Don't bother," Bonnie says crisply, offhanded, like Grams sipping from her silver flask, and Caroline frowns when she hears the tinkle of a bell, "I'm already there."

* * *

She cracks heads, he breaks necks. On her yard he looks like hell.

There's a cold mauling at her scarf, and blood on his shirt. The rusty tang of it carries across the air. If she doesn't get him out of here someone might see him, then it'll be miles of paperwork for Liz and lines of compulsion for her. Her friends are safely out of harms way, out of his way, and Enzo sees her across the green. She thinks that there're deeper hollows beneath his eyes, no smirk in sight, his shell of human pretend sliding off the white ache of his bones.

He looks like frostbite, cold and raw and mean. "Where is he?"

"Can't say." Strange. In the end _she's_ the one who's sticking her neck out for Damon. _An occupational hazard of being Elena's friend_, Silas had pronounced to a room full of them once, snapping his fingers, all sass and hero-hair _evil_. She tilts her head, her ear grazes against the fleece of her scarf. "You going to kill him?"

Enzo scares her, she's never seen anyone look so lost. The color bleeding out of his skin, he wears the red of everyone else's without triumph, without wildfire anger or arrogance. He looks torn.

She's afraid for him.

She also deeply dislikes him, _so._ "It's inevitable with Damon." She calls across the green, house keys spinning on her finger. "Betrayal. He always finds a way to stick a knife into your back."

She's tried to warn him before, but no one ever listens, do they?

Enzo comes across, towards her and Caroline's heart jumps behind her teeth, held in a stiff grin. Her keys land flat in her palm and she clenches her fist. There's an animal shelter down the street from studio her father used to work in, mangy dogs and crippled puppies. They all had the same look about them. They didn't know her enough not to bite her. Enzo's not going to ask again. Not with words.

"You gonna snap my neck?" She asks breezily, but her knees shift apart a little. Her stance a little less rigid as he advances. "Kill me?"

Halfway up the porch steps she was when she sighted him on her yard. She takes a step back to accommodate him when his boot creaks on the stair, the lights flicker on the porch. Motion sensor, yellow, the shadows beneath the rocking chair flee _and Enzo's going_ to _snap her neck._

He's only a little taller than her. Caroline's hands are freezing, the tips of her ears turning blue and her nose red - the low pang of self preservation is what sets her barreling forward. "Feel honored. You were trapped together with him for years, he left you in a fire, and if that doesn't reaffirm the face that Damon will never be the person everyone wishes he'd _grow_ _up_ and be, then remember that the universe has aligned itself for this purpose, to give you the love of your life and have her snatched away by him just so it could confirm to you what an asshat Damon Salvatore is. But," she rolls her shoulders, purses her lips at the mosquito whining around the lights. "Guess it's just too little, too late. He's long gone."

"Stefan's got an invitation in here, hasn't he?"

She lowers her gaze from the sky, meets his. "True."

He looks like it hurts. She hopes that it hurts, she likes thinking that he hurts. She wants it to punch him in the appendix till it ruptures something. She wants the _air_ to hurt him when he breathes it. Oh, he'd thought himself so clever in Atlanta. She doesn't feel sorry for him, he's a bastard who only knows how to pour drinks, kill people and say clever, mean things to pretty girls.

He's only a little older than her. She's got a vial of Vervain in her pocket, though she doesn't know how much good it'll do against someone who's been building an immunity to stronger and stronger strains of it through years of torture.

"So does Damon." She adds, he adjusts his weight and the steps creak. Caroline feels a strain beneath her cheekbones, her face tense. "What, you gonna huff and puff and blow the house down?"

There's blood on his shirt. Stefan's, maybe Damon's too. Elena's a good get-away driver, sharp turns and wild steering for someone with such pin-straight hair. Caroline only hopes her Chevy survives the trip.

She tells herself she's buying time instead of kicking wounded animals in the side.

"You're a hypocrite too, by the way. It's funny seeing you all torn up over Maggie." There goes her mouth. She'll spit at him all she needs to, she'll crack his skull open, she'll break his neck. He's lost too much for her to be taunting him, but this isn't about taunting - this is about being made and unmade, and made again. Her friends will survive him. Enzo's just peices of a man, put back together wrong. He's out of the cage now, he's allowed to be hurt. He's not allowed to kill and think karma isn't going to kick his teeth in. Turn about's fair play. "You want to kill Damon for killing someone you loved. How many folks have _you_ murdered? How many of them had people they loved, people who cared about them?"

"They're not here." Enzo decides. He looks at her and sees nothing, she wonders if she's just a cloud of ephemeral _something_. He's already turning away. Tearing down the green.

"Stop!" She shouts at his back. "Hold it right there, you're not going anywhere."

And here's the kicker, here's some _real_ shit. Enzo stops.

Right there on the grass, he _stops_. His shoulders fall apart, his back heaving, she's been mean. She's also been right. What a damn shame. Her cheek prickles, as if from a slap. She'd been right, say something sharp enough - loud enough, and he falls apart like wet paper.

Caroline licks her lips, frightened, disgusted, and yes, _emboldened_ by this realization. He's obedient. Enzo's a dog pretending to be a man. Elena told her Proffessor Whittemore had led him out of the spelled traveller's house the way he'd call away a dutiful child. "You're not going to hurt anyone." Caroline says, her voice shakes. All that level bravado, that prickly challenge...all evaporated in the face of how pliable he is. "You're not going to hurt anyone. Are we clear?"

Dully he turns, his eyes glisten. She's freezing and he looks like the blood's boiling him from inside out. "Clear," He says morosely before he _moves_.

Enzo crosses the space between them in three brusque steps, up and kisses her, hard - it spears Caroline right through. He kisses her hard enough to _hurt_, thumbs bruising into the hollow of her throat, her scarf too loosely looped to bar him access, no other part of him touches her and his mouth might be hot and entirely unexpected but Caroline bites him _right_ back.

When he pulls away back his lower lip's bleeding, she's done that. _Caroline's_ done that.

Her skin mottles green and blue, ugly when he takes his paws off her and Enzo swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Clear," He says again, not winded in the least. Somehow he manages to look even angrier than before. He can't do it. She's told him not to.

"You're a terrible kisser," She tells him.

Maybe it's a lie. Enzo's look manages to be both dead and livid, and he doesn't ask about the matter of Stefan and Damon again. Stiffly he turns away from her, Caroline darts her tongue out to lick her lips. Okay. He goes, she doesn't bother making him promise. There's something even more compelling than a sire bond about Enzo. He doesn't seem to have any purpose. She thinks she could make him jump into a Volcano if she asked him to, with everyone else dead there's really nothing else he could better bother doing.

He's sick in the head. He's grown up wrong.

Caroline curls her fingers over the biting metal of her house keys and enters the house long after he's gone.

* * *

Her Family Retreat a little ways out of town is one of the few places Enzo hasn't got an invite to. Which _shocking_, Enzo's somehow personable when he's not murdering Whittermore family scions.

Bonnie and Jeremy are occupied with the traveler's business, which is what Bonnie uses as an excuse to get her knuckles out of the ice bath Caroline's thoughtfully laid out for her. Enzo's marvelous cheekbones has cracked beneath her fist very nicely, Benny Horowitz had it easy all those years ago.

Bonnie and Jeremy go up North of Mystic Falls, chasing Top Secret leads. Caroline scowls, which they obviously can't talk about since they don't have a traveler knife and anyone at this point could be the enemy.

Caroline allows these bogus bare-minimums of the truth, just this _once_ though.

She'd been alright with sheltering Elena and Stefan. Sheltering Damon, though? Not so much. She's given her invite through gritted teeth, and only because Stefan's throat had been gouged open at the time, which was not an appropriate time to break Damon's balls over his past (and continuous) shitty decisions coming back to bite him in the ass. But okay, fine.

She leaves them playing poker in front of the fireplace, Stefan sighing over his cards, Elena sullen, and Damon harassing her about where her dad keeps - kept - the brandy. They all look miserable, coerced into a poker game no one wants to play. The bandages around Stefan's throat are still blotted with red, he lays down a full house. He looks like he wants to shoot himself in the head.

Like fuck she tells Damon anything. All the cheap alcohol he wants he can find in the fridge she's stocked for them.

It's barely been four hours since the mess in the Grille. A mess which would have been much much worse if Bonnie hadn't interceded. The Bennet Witch Anchor (God, what a mouthful) had come into the Grille just as Damon's was getting into the worst part of his speech to his prison boyfriend, his brother, and his and his brother's ex-girlfriend. Sometimes Caroline thought Bonnie was the only one of her friends who still remembered what diplomacy was.

She'd still punched Enzo, and Stefan's throat had yet to knit itself back together again adequately enough for him to launch into a long relationship intervention talk with Elena and Damon. Of course there's the small matter of the retreat being haunted, but they're settled.

Bonnie's name flashes across her screen, and Caroline digs herself out of the awkward company. The porch faces the lake, and the night's balmy, a blue moon hangs, and she sits on the stairs and answers the call.

"Good evening," Caroline greets equably, "To what do I owe the honour?"

There's a long pause. She can hear traffic in the background, "Caroline?"

She sits up a little straighter. "Where are you, Enzo?"

He sounds wispy and far-off, his voice hoarse. "I don't know what to do." He sounds huddled and _small_. "I don't...I don't know what to do."

She's not used to that. His breathing is fast and shallow, grating weakly over the line. Caroline rubs her palm over her knee. "...What do you need?"

She could hang up on him. She could _so_ hang up on him. This could be a trap. Her friends are bleeding before the fireplace, and Bonnie's on a traveler hunt, there's something so achingly homeless about him now. He's got no where to go. She isn't going to take him in.

"Caroline," with an urgency that knocks her doubts right on their asses, "Caroline, help me."

* * *

So she invites him in. He takes a shower in the guest bathroom, she gives him one of her dad's old shirts. Liz Forbes hadn't gotten the chance to burn the one's Caroline had hid in a suitcase beneath the bed. She fixes something solid in the kitchen, macaroni and cheese to go along with the mug of O Neg she's ready to warm in the microwave. He looks moderately less like shit after a shower, just only a little less pale and hair very wet.

Inky dark hair. He stops in the doorway, surprised to see her ladling out plates. "What, you gonna kiss me again?"

That gets him moving, she hands him the plates and he quietly sets the table.

He has the good manners not to pick at the food, he eats it all like sawdust though. Chewing without flavour, or vigour, which is damn insulting really because her macaroni and cheese is fantastic shit okay. "I'll burn your shirt," She tells him, speaking over the strange silence. The bloodied shirt. The shirt he bloodied yesterday endangering her friends, and here he is, in her house, eating food she's made for him. "I hope you don't mind," She adds, a little less harsh. "It's beyond salvageable."

Enzo's cheeks are hollow, his fork moves dumbly over the goop.

"I can't help you," she mentions, "Not really. I think you just need to get warm, get settled somewhere, and you know..." Caroline swallows, he hasn't touched the blood. "There's beer in the fridge."

She excuses herself.

At night she does the laundry, he's laid out on the sofa. She gets ready to toss everything in the trash, and Caroline checks his pockets, just like she does when she's doing her mom's laundry. For such a straight laced person, Liz Forbes was always leaving little bits and pieces of things in her pockets.

There's a lighter in his jacket, except he's never smelt like cigarette smoke to her. Sentimental value, she thinks, a strange knot in her throat. Okay. There's also a little note book, Caroline runs her thumbs down the leaf of it, cracks it open and shuts it quick of the gold embellished writing on the cover. There's a black and white photo too, of a woman with her head twisted off.

Caroline sets these things aside.

She sits on the coffee table, (which _abysmal,_ she knows but) she doesn't think she can impart the severity, the importance of what she says if she's not directly facing him. Enzo sits up slowly, he hasn't slept a wink. It's three in the morning, she smells of soft detergent and fabric softener, and he smells pleasantly of her shampoo. She puts his things next to her. Enzo doesn't seem to notice them.

He's a pretender, of the lousiest kind.

"When you love someone," Caroline says, an awful gnawing in her chest. She curls her fingers over her knees, fortifying. She starts again, more level, less choked up, less _I-know-I've-been-there_. "When you love someone...it never really goes away."

Enzo doesn't say a word.

"But...one day it does," She says, and that gets his attention. He has eyes like India ink, black and dark, and hollow as the deepest chasm into the earth. "One day you find someone new, it hurts a little less. You live for other things."

"I don't know how."

"You learn." Caroline tells him, grabbing his hand. "You learn. Only cowards don't learn. Enzo, are you _listening?_"

"It goes away?" He challenges hoarsely, staring at the palm that smother's his knuckles. "You promise that it goes away?"

Well, she hopes it does. There's a nugget behind her ribs that hopes she's right, for both their sakes. If she says the wrong thing, he'll switch it off - she's seen that dead-eyed look before. She can see the signs.

"Yes," Caroline goes out on a limb, "It does. I'll show you."

_Better my way than yours._

* * *

He doesn't move, not even after she barges through the door, past him. "Where have you been?"

"None of your business," Caroline replies. She's pissed and she doesn't know why. She finds the kitchen, throws off her scarf and hunts through the cabinets in the dingy darkness. Her throat's parched, her blood's boiling, and Enzo's arms are folded when he turns. He looks like a child who's been wrongly punished, and it pisses Caroline off.

"I called you four hours ago."

"Yeah," Caroline replies, slamming the cabinet shut. Can't find a goddamn glass in this fucked up abandoned house, can she? An adress picked out of Elena and Stefan's doppelganger visions of their picket fence life. Who signed her up as his sober companion anyway? Oh yeah, she did. Doesn't mean she's going to turn the rest of her life over to him. "I know."

He thunders towards her, Caroline grabs his jaw the same time he grabs her arm. He looks like he wants to tear it off and beat her with it, but Caroline's grabbed his jaw, grip too tight, too hard for tenderness. She can't hurt him - not like this anyway. It's the only thing that matters. She can't trust him either, even if he's somehow decided she's the prime thing to cling to. Sullen and stupid, he just does as she says without thinking about it. What is _wrong_ with him? Caroline doesn't want to fight him, doesn't want to pity him. She doesn't want to fix him. Not tonight.

"You called me," She hisses, "So, I'm here. What else do you want from me?"

"You're late," Enzo growls. He doesn't even try to escape from her grasp. If Caroline digs her nails in any sharper she'll have blood on her manicure. "You said you'd help me and you're late."

"I _can't_ help you."

He growls again, and faster than she thought possible, with enough force to send her flying, her ass hits the fridge. He crowds her there, eyes black and thunderous and before Caroline can hyperventilate, punch him in the throat, get him _off_ her, no one throws her around the room anymore, no one is _allowed_ - Enzo drags his way down so that he's on his knees, her hips pinned between the rippling muscles of his arms. Caroline gasps, grabbing at his black hair before she can slip, and his palm slithers around the back of her thigh, coarse fingers biting and pulling rough, and Enzo's _hooking her knee over his shoulder_.

_Oh,_ Caroline's head spins, unable to compute. She can feel the sounds rumbling through his chest, up his hard throat, his manhandling of her screams of wounded wrath. Her thigh's pressed against his ear, scrubbed against his rough jaw, and his finger's tugging, slipping easy beneath her sundress. Caroline's heart roars in her ears, and the elastic of her panties snap beneath his dragging fist.

And she's arching - arching into his mouth before he's even _there_, before his thumb finally finds her, and it _does_ find her. Dips and swipes a long rough stroke up just to make her heart hitch.

Caroline clenches her teeth, tears at his hair. Let's him work. Let's Enzo drag her open, lick her raw. She crushes a moan when he curls his tongue inside her, pulls it back, dragging long and hot and finding her clit.

His hands, wide and powerful on the small of her back, tug her to his mouth, anchoring her as he _eats her out._

_Shit!_Caroline furrows her nails into his scalp, hopes she draws fucking _blood_, doesn't know if she should make him stop or make him move faster. She's bucking against his mouth, the muscle's in her thighs hooking, tightening deliriously, curling his head tighter between her legs. What he lacks in technique he makes up with force, this isn't about love, this isn't really even about taking. For her it might be about winning, and for him...it's about forcing reactions, forcing purpose. He's dangling by a thread and she dislikes him so intensely it makes bile rise up in her throat, but she needs him to go harder, go _faster._

She can't say anything. She's too proud. Anything would come out to high, and weak and wailing. She can't say anything, he might stop. She doesn't like him, but she doesn't _want_ him to stop. She doesn't moan because she's not supposed to like it.

Caroline can't do much with the way he licks her open. She's close. She tries to focus, tries to hold it off, but it's terribly hard to concentrate with his tongue inside her and the swell of pressure building in her tummy that tells her she's _close_. Her whole body's vibrating with the force of it, with the impending explosion, like she's going to burst out of her skin and take flight. She let's go of his hair, stuffs her fist into her mouth.

She closes her eyes, arches, grinds up against his lips.

And then she let's_ go_, doesn't cry out. A wail spiraling tight into a muffled nothing, right behind her chest. She doesn't cry out when he bites shallow the inside of her thigh. She almost does, but she _doesn't._

His mouth's luridly wet when she opens her eyes to look down at him. Her knee slips from his shoulder, he gently guides her foot back to the ground. Caroline tries to stand straight, but her back's molded against the fridge door and her legs feel like jelly. The last of her pleasure slipping away, leaving her body tingly and tired.

"Better?" He asks.

Being on your knees isn't a position to speak from with much power, Enzo seems to like it there, though. Waits for her answer, very rapt.

Caroline clears her throat, pulse still crashing in her ears. "Sub par."

* * *

She doesn't allow it to happen very often. Enzo and her fight, until she snaps at him to shut up. So he does. He does until he needs to get back at her somehow, she let's him drive her into corners sometimes, let's him grapple with her skirt while she tears his belt. He curses desperately, his eyelids smothered against the curve of her shoulder, her palm sliding around his length and bringing him off.

She doesn't let him fuck her, and he doesn't ask.

He leaves Mystic Falls, meandering aimlessly through the night, into bars, starting fights he has no business starting, and sometimes he comes back, weeks after. Discretely, quietly, mean and stinking of gas station gasoline.

He mentions Cape Horn, she laughs at him. "You keep saying that. You're still here."

Water drips down his neck, he clenches her one of the extra towels in the Forbes household between his hands. When he looks at her she can't read his expression, "I'm waiting for you to finish up so you can come with me."

He's the second fool to ask her away with him, Caroline thought Klaus had meant it more than he'd ever meant anything in the world. But look at where that had gotten him. Lying through his teeth and soon-to-be slinging diapers in New Orleans.

"You can't be serious," She laughs, indignant and confused. She disapproves of everything he does, he _knows_ that. What does he think it'll be like on the road together? Not that's she's considering it, she's not. "You're terrible company."

"Maybe I am," Enzo shrugs, scrubbing his wet hair. He unknots his towel, it lands on the floor, Caroline scrunches her nose, not so much at his nudity - he's got a swimmer's litheness and a boxer's muscle definition, so no complaints here - but because she's been raised right and you don't just drop towels on bathroom floors. "Just think about it."

"Not thinking about it," Caroline watches the tendons in his back ripple as he bends for the shirt she's set out for him, Bill Forbe's shirt. "You do everything wrong, I don't want to have to scream at you every time you decide killing innocents is okay."

"No one's innocent." Enzo says darkly, typically. Caroline could push the point, disagree, but it doesn't seem appropriate. She shifts against the door frame, thoughtfully suckling her lower lip.

"Pick that up," She says instead, and Enzo does so without so much as an _ugh_, or a _seriously, Caroline?_ She keeps away the satisfied smile, it's not ladylike to gloat, too much anyway. She gets to see his back again, it's without scars, without any marks that might suggest his whereabouts for the past century. Remarkable what the body chooses to hide. "You don't want me around you on the road. I'm too high strung, I make maps and travel plans, which when not strictly adhered to make me shrieky." He quietly hands the towel to her, and she tugs onto it. "I'm a little domineering, if you haven't figured it out yet."

"I like that you're domineering." Enzo says quietly, the way he looks at the floor almost seems bashful. "I like that you know what you want."

"Because you don't?" Her smile's a little skewed, he sounds so simple, like a child. "You don't know what you want? And I'm good at giving orders? And you're a good soldier?"

He looks at her, then. He swallows, mouth dry. She's right. She doesn't know how it came about, her taking care of him, him listening to her.

"You must seriously be desperate for a reason to live if you're waiting around for orders from me."

There's the pink tints of blood still spinning round the shower drain, and a man with an unhealthy fixiation for her in her house. Now where has she seen that before? Enzo's look holds a long time, he rolls his shoulders, darts his eyes away. "I like being around you."

"I don't particularly like you," Caroline mentions, just to they're clear. Her heart warms, but she's also sick. "But I guess. Who knows? We could hit a few places together sometime. When I'm done with college. But don't hold your breath."

A little of that tension bleeds out of him, and his eyes are full of a smile, a little bit grateful.

She steps forward to help him button his shirt, which of course ends with her skirt on the floor.

* * *

Five years later he's at the Grand Canyon. He buys her a drink, and the witch's out for her neck too, Enzo clears out the parking lot at the knick-knack shop for tourists. It's not very glamorous. But the last time she saw him was the day after her third semester ended, he'd been thinking about Lebanon.

Caroline's finished a double degree in PR and Broadcasting, and she's pulling glass out of her hair. Full circle.

"Why're you here again?" Caroline groans, dragging the backseat door open. She throws herself back across the seats, her boots dangling out into the air.

"Someone needs to save you. You're welcome, by the way," Enzo answers. He smells like gasoline and diesel black sole prints on cracked tarmac, he clicks after her. "Heard some trouble brewing. Something about the Louisiana crumbling."

Of course Klaus's kingdom is falling around his ears, and of course someone's out to kill her like she's still a valid part of this whole mess. Caroline rubs her eyes.

"Are you running away?" He asks, very idly, for someone who's crawling in after her. The leather squeaks beneath their combined weight, to feel his hovering over her brings Caroline an unwelcome, anticipatory thrill. She lies very still, arm thrown over her eyes. Everyone who could pass by and see them is dead, so Caroline doesn't think about propriety. It's the farthest thing from his mind too. She doesn't move, not even after he's climbed over the seats, waiting on top of her.

Caroline's unwilling to move, her scalp stings, her palms lashed with blood and gravel. She cracks her eyes open, peers at him through her fingers, exhausted. "I told you I'd be where we'd agreed in two days."

"I know."

"I could have handled it."

"I know."

She can feel his scrutiny. It's uncomfortable, how aware she feels beneath him. Her blood's still running high, her limbs still aching from the adrenaline, she wants nothing more than to pulls his hips down, flush against her and have him _move_. She wants him snug against her, to crush him with her thighs, to fuck her drowsy and hard.

"So?" Enzo asks again. Caroline looks at him again, couldn't block him out if she tried. He's so fucking _annoying_. "Are you?"

"No," She scowls, "I'm not running away."

"Hm," When he slides a palm up her bare leg, she's both relieved and pissed. "Are you going to New Orleans?"

"None of your business." She says, shifting her hips so he can roll down her panties. He drops down, elbow holding him up so he can take rest his temples against her neck, he's heavy enough to crush her - Caroline likes that about him, she sighs when he manages to slide it all the way away, dropping the confection of black lace to the side. She's missed this, she realizes. Her legs fall apart easily to accommodate him. "Maybe. I don't know. Okay, fine."

"Fine?" He groans against her ear, and Caroline digs her nails into his shoulder-blades.

"Fine," She spits, "I'll go to New Orleans." Nip it in the bud and everything.

"Take me with you." He moans, Caroline stops. She stops trying to drag his shirt off. Enzo's pressing, insistent, blind to her bewilderment he's hard against her thigh, urgent, desperate, he repeats. His mouth grasping at her pulse, "Take me with you."

And because she's stupid, she does.

* * *

Everyone wants to be the biggest asshole in the room. Klaus finds them at the bar, he's been watching for a while, yeah. His mouth's a mean smirk, meant to antagonise, boiling with it's own self destructive venom, barley sweetened lemon and sugar. When her name rolls out of his mouth the same sinfully red way it always has, Enzo bristles, hackles raised, looks more alive than she's ever seen him.

Caroline graciously extracts herself and him from Klaus's bar, she's not in a mood for his charm when he very well knows that he's the reason everyone's trying to kill her. Last love _bullshit,_ fucked her well and hard against the forest floor before he ever thought to mention that he had a baby mama.

In the hotel room Enzo growls. "I don't like him."

"No one really does," Caroline tells him, kicking off her shoes. She hates New Orlean's humidity, it's the worst heat wave of the decade. Enzo keep cracking his knuckles. "Strange though, considering that you're both apparently my type," it's delicious to have one's words thrown back, isn't it? "Expected you two to get along quite well."

He studies her hair, inches in for a close look. His eyes narrow and she sees something dangerous flicker in them. "You fuck him?"

Caroline's hand stills around her neck, halfway to removing the rest of her accessories. She's never heard him swear before. Not once. She studies him in the mirror, his coiled body, his blood itching beneath his skin. The skin over his knuckles taught.

"He looks like you," He snarls, "he looks like he could be your _brother_."

She rolls her eyes, unscrewing her earrings. "How about you shut up." She tells him, and then harder. "Actually, how about you just leave?"

Klaus doesn't need the two of them at dinner tonight. She'd thought Enzo's presence might atleast guarantee her from falling into bed with him or tearing out his eyes, but if he can't handle it he can go to _hell._

"No," Enzo says, "I'm not going _anywhere_."

"_Excuse_ _me?_"

It's the first time he's refused her anything.

"You don't get to make the rules," He whispers, "Not on this. You don't get to send me away. He's _slime_."

"So are you," Caroline reminds him heatedly. Her pearl studs roll out of her palm and clatter on the dresser, and he's at her back before she can say anything else.

"Caroline," he prays, he's never prayed to anything before in his life. He's a soldier, he just _does_. He doesn't _ask_. Her stomach flips, her palms hit the mahogany, clammy, but outwardly she remains calm. Collected. Caroline.

She's just barely in charge, wildly _un_-in charge when he presses the length of his body against her back.

"Caroline, don't send me away. He's a lousy entitled brat, he just wants to get his paws on you again. He wants to hurt you. He thinks you belong to him. You promised me Cape Horn. You promised."

She's grasping at his hair, his temples pressed into the zipper of her dress. His palm presses over her stomach, turns down to the hem of her dress, crumpling beneath his shaking fist. His whole body's shaking. She turns into him and lets him slump into her body, pulls his head over her chest. He presses her into the dresser, knocking down the toiletries, scrabbling for her underwear.

Caroline's angry, euphoric, she slides his belt out of their loops. Her movements begin to lend a new urgency to his, and Enzo's digs his knuckles into the flesh of her ass, and she anchors her legs around his hips. And there he is, without a hitch, he slides into her name burning in his mouth.

The thrust of his hips slam her into the dresser mirror and he's kissing her again, rougher than anyone's ever done before. Kissing her like he did the last time on her porch, the only time. Like one of them's going to come away with blood, and it'll be him, it's always going to be him, and he'll swipe his mouth with the back of his hand and set off into the night again. It's been a long time since anyone would dare put their hands on her like that, on Caroline Forbes, smother all the peices of her with a flaming tongue, it's been a long time since she let someone do it. He fucks her without so much as a second thought, kisses her the second time since they met. And everything else? That was all raunchy, feeble play, that was just fooling around and being vindictive.

Enzo fucks her like he's afraid, like he's afraid enough to finally _do_ something about it. Enzo fucks her like a broken man reassembling himself, like he wants to leave a mark.

Like he wants Klaus to smell it on her, just how much she doesn't care. Just how much he's lost.

Just how much Enzo's _hers._

* * *

.

.

.

* * *

**end note:** everyone I know, I am so sorry.  
I am so _sorry._


End file.
